Random Encounters

#5 Bus, headed east on Jasper Avenue, 5:00 pm, Tuesday.

I'm seated at a window seat on the driver's side of the bus, about three rows back. The bus stops at the Edmonton General to pick up some passengers and a guy gets on, maybe 18 or so. Dressed in black pants and a white track jacket, the guy and his j-roc inspired apparel (he must have lost his visor, it was a windy day) walks over and sits down on the seat next to me.

Guy: "Hey, how are you doing?"

I don't even notice he's talking to me because I'm listening to my mp3 player. I realize he's talking to me so I look at him and realize that I don't recognize him at all.

"uh?"

"So you're shy, I see that. So how's your day going?"

"Oh, fine thanks. How is your day going?"

"Yeah I like to talk to people. It's hard to meet people, so I like to talk to people on the bus. But only ladies"

"Ohhh okay i see" - trying to humour him

"So are you coming home from school? Work? Or what?"

"Just going home after work. You?"

"Do you have an ipod?"

Yeah buddy why should I tell you..."yeah"

He pulls out an old cassette walkman "this is old school and I think it's better than an ipod. It has radio and that's all you need"

"I used to have one of those"

I stare out the window for a minute while he adjusts his radio.

"My brother punched me in the mouth yesterday. It's still hurting".

...

Silence for a few minutes. I'm not even going to bother responding to that. Many years of taking the bus has taught me to never give anyone an invitation. Give them an invite to blabber endlessly to you and they will almost always take advantage of it.

I fold my hands on my lap and go back to listening to my music and staring out the window and concentrating really hard on the buildings we pass. I stare at the CKUA building as the bus goes by and realize for the first time that there's more building behind than you can see at the street level. The lady across the aisle gets off the bus so the boy swiftly gets up and takes her seat. Eventually he gets bored of that and goes and talks to the bus driver. I can hear him saying something to the bus driver about traffic. I take a better look at his face. Doesn't look like he was punched, but maybe it's hard to tell.

We both get off the bus near the Union Bank Inn. He stands outside the front door of the bus, looking down the street with no obvious desire to go in any particular direction. I pass him on my way to 100 Street to catch the #8. I look back before I turn the corner and he's gone in the other direction. The 8 arrives and I get on and go home.

Things to do in the evening.

I'm a nerd. Being a nerd, like to go for walks in the evenings. Some days I go for walks for the fresh air, other days for the exercise (winter has not been nice to me and my clothes don't seem to be fitting well) and sometimes I go for a walk to be a nerd. My favourite neighbourhood to walk through is King Edward Park (KEP), directly north of where I live. It has fantastic grid streets, boulevards with huge trees, next to no traffic and every house, church and shop is unique. It's an interesting place to walk through and I have to admit that I find myself walking through it quite often, whether on my way to Bonnie Doon, Value Village, Mill Creek or just while going for a walk.

I didn't have my camera with me tonight - I thought it would get darker sooner but it turns out that I had more than enough light for what I needed. I'll post some photos in the spring once I get out and take some!

Holidays

I'd like to share some photos from my new camera

Some photos of the U of A campus, pre-snow:







I have until January 5 off from work and I hope to make the best of it. I am going to Canadian Tire today to get crazy carpets/toboggans so that I can go to the ravine and pretend that I'm 10 years old again.

Also, I think the skating rink by my house is open now so I hope to do some skating.

I have lots to do so hopefully I can forget about work for a while. Yesssssss!

Deadmonton

So this is just a post where I'd like to vent a little bit. No, more like share my opinion on some stuff.

Topic 1: Leaving Edmonton. There is a huge rush to leave Edmonton and I'm feeling left behind. So I'm pretty much stuck here for a while housing arrangement wise and I'm just thinking what is so bad about this place. Moving to another city will not make you a more interesting person, nor will it guarantee that you will meet some mind-blowingly amazing people. Yes Edmonton at times is the redneck capital of the wild west and we're all lost in a mess of big-box stores, shitty live music venues, Ed Stelmach, long depressing winters and an economy very much dependent on the dirty oil sands. There is some good stuff though, like the university campus, 124 Street, warm summers with lots of sun, downtown (sometimes), whyte ave area (believe it or not) etc. When you find something good to do it's that much more exciting. Haaaaa I'm not even convincing myself here. Next!

Topic 2: The Arlington is going to be officially torn down now that it's no longer reasonably salvageable. Shame on that slumlord bastard I forget his name.

Topic 3: HMV doesn't have the latest LCD soundsystem CD, released last year. Let's hope they go the way of shitty Music World and go out of business.

Topic 4: Alarm clocks. I was 2 hours late for work on Wednesday. NOT COOL. I have officially proved my incompetence to my co-workers and supervisor. But I guess that's my fault more than the alarm clock. I think I'll change the topic to CAN'T SLEEP, NOT TIRED. That's a better thing to complain about.

Topic 5: Loud headphones on the bus. Need I say more?

Topic 6: People that don't recognize/acknowledge you when you say hi and YOU definitely know them and their name and whats going on in their life. WANKERS!

That's all for now. I'm not really in a bad mood!! It's okay! Just wondering if anyone agrees with me any one of these items. Please assure me I'm not crazy! Just gotta get it out of my head once in a while.

Other than that things are fine, I am LOVING the fall colours and I've taken a gazillion whimsical photos over the last few weeks. If only we could freeze everything and it would look like this and stay this temperature all winter!!

Fail blog

I know I'm probably the last person on earth to discover the wonders of the Fail Blog but here is a personal favourite video:

http://failblog.org/2008/09/08/conspiracy-fail/

You're welcome.

Yack Yohnson

Drunk post!

I'm going for a walk now!

July update

For the record, I do not attack alpacas with toothpicks. However, I do attack people that look like John Travolta from the movie Grease with chairs in the Edmonton City Centre Mall Food Court. Exactly one person will get that joke oh I'm so funny.

So how has everyone been? I somehow feel guilted into giving a blog update. Here goes:

Well I was in Scotland from the end of April to the end of May, I had a great time, drank some beer, met an awful lot of Auzzies, enjoyed haggis neeps and tatties, listened to people play bagpipes for change, ignored pickup lines from englishmen with bad teeth in bars, visited fairy glen, stumbled home drunk and picked up curry chips to eat on the way, sailed the Loch Ness, went on a Dolphin cruise and saw no dolphins, toured a scotch whisky distillery, experienced the crazy bus drivers who hate their jobs and lots lots more that I have likely forgotten about. I have about 60 photos uploaded to Flickr...but there are 500 in total. I'm working on it.

I could see being there for more than a few months, maybe a year, and picking up a scottish accent. I think it's totally a cool accent. The people there were really friendly. SIGH real world awaits tomorrow morning and every morning hooray....

Now because it is late, here is a picture of fairy glen in all its glory.


Goodnight